Chapter 3
chapter three
‘Hello there,’ said Stan, stunned. He clumsily patted her shoulder.
For the first fraction of a second Joy assumed it was one of their daughters, but this girl barely came up to Stan’s chest. Joy’s children were tall: the boys were six foot four, Amy was six foot and Brooke was six foot one. They were all broad-shouldered, dark-haired, olive-skinned, scarlet-cheeked and dimpled, like their father. (‘Your children all look like giant Spanish matadors,’ Joy’s mother used to say, chidingly, as if Joy had picked them off a shelf.)
This girl was petite, with straggly dirty-blonde hair and blue-veined mottled white skin.
‘I’m sorry.’ The girl stood back, took a shuddery breath, sniffed and tried to arrange her mouth into the shape of a smile. ‘I’m so sorry. How embarrassing.’
She had a fresh, deep cut just beneath her right eyebrow. Trails of shiny-wet blood trickled down her face.
‘It’s fine, darling.’ Joy took a firm hold of the girl’s stick-thin upper arm in case she fainted.
She would call her ‘darling’ until she remembered her name. Stan would be no help. She could sense his eyes trying to meet hers: Who the heck is this?
The girl had a tiny seed-like piercing in her nose and a tattoo of a green vine curled around her pale forearm. She wore a threadbare long-sleeved shirt with a spatter of old grease stains on the front and ripped blue jeans. There was a silver key on a chain around her neck. Her bare feet were purple with cold. She was vaguely, blurrily, not-quite familiar.
It would be helpful if the girl said her name, but young people always assumed that they’d be remembered. It happened all the time. A young stranger would make a beeline for them, waving delightedly: ‘Mr and Mrs Delaney! How are you? It’s been ages!’ Joy would have to bluff her way through the conversation while simultaneously flicking through her mental database: A tennis kid? A club member’s grown-up child? One of the children’s friends?
‘What happened to you?’ Stan gestured at the girl’s eye. He looked frightened, suddenly elderly. ‘Is someone out there?’ He peered over her shoulder onto the street. It would never have occurred to Joy that there would be someone out there.
‘There’s no-one out there,’ said the girl. ‘I came in a cab.’
‘It’s okay, sweetheart, we’ll get you fixed up,’ said Joy.
This was very confusing but it would all become clear. Stan always wanted everything instantly clarified.
Joy guessed the girl to be in her late twenties, the same age as Brooke, but she didn’t look like one of Brooke’s friends, who were busy, polite young women with a lot on their minds. This girl had the grungy look that Amy favoured, so it seemed most likely she was one of Amy’s friends. This made it difficult, because Amy moved in a variety of eclectic circles. Someone from that amateur theatre group Amy had been so enthusiastic about for at least a week? A university friend? From her first abandoned degree? Second?
‘How did you hurt yourself?’ asked Joy.
‘My boyfriend and I got in an argument,’ said the girl. She swayed and pressed the heel of her hand to her bloody eye. ‘I just ran out of the apartment onto the street and jumped in a cab . . .’
‘Your boyfriend did this to you?’ said Stan. ‘You mean he hit you?’
‘Sort of,’ said the girl.
‘Sort of? What does that mean?’ said Stan. The man could be so abrasive at times. ‘Did he hit you or not?’
‘It’s complicated,’ said the girl.
‘No, it’s not. If you’ve been assaulted, we should call the police,’ said Stan.
‘No.’ The girl shifted from Joy’s grip. ‘No way. I don’t want the police involved.’
‘We don’t need to call the police, darling, not if you don’t want,’ said Joy. ‘It’s your choice. But come and sit down.’
If the girl didn’t want to call the police then that was fine with her. She didn’t want police here.
As they passed under one of the hallway downlights, Joy saw that the girl was older than she’d first thought. Maybe her early thirties? Think, think, think.
Could she be one of the boys’ ex-girlfriends? There had been a few years where it had been hard to keep track of all the young girls sashaying about their house. Both boys had long-term relationships with tanned blonde girls in white sneakers called Tracey. Stan could never tell which Tracey was which. Both Traceys ended up crying at Joy’s kitchen table on separate occasions while Joy chopped onions and murmured comfortingly. Logan’s Tracey still sent Christmas cards.
But this girl didn’t look like one of the girlfriends. Troy went for glossy princesses and Logan went for sexy librarians and this girl was neither.
‘Then I realised I didn’t have any money,’ said the girl as they walked into the kitchen, and she stopped and tipped back her head to study the high ceiling as if it were a cathedral. Joy followed her gaze as it travelled around the room to the sideboard crammed with framed family photos and ornaments, including the pair of horrible sneering china cats that had belonged to Stan’s mother, and lingered on the bowl of fresh fruit sitting on the table: shiny red apples and bright yellow bananas. Was the child hungry? She was welcome to all the bananas. Joy didn’t know why she kept buying them. It was as if they were for display purposes only. Most ended up mushy-soft and black and then she felt ashamed throwing them away.
‘I was just completely empty-handed. No wallet, no phone, no money: nothing.’
‘Sit down, darling.’ Joy pulled out a chair at the kitchen table.
Stan had stopped barking questions, thank goodness. He silently took down the first-aid kit from its place in the cupboard above the refrigerator where Joy couldn’t reach it without standing on a chair. He put it on the table and opened the lid because Joy always struggled with the stiff lock. Then he went to the sink and got the girl a glass of water.
‘Let’s take a look at this.’ Joy put on her glasses. ‘Is it very painful?’
‘Oh, it’s fine. I have a high pain threshold.’ The girl lifted the glass of water with a shaky hand and drank. Her fingernails were ragged. A nail biter. Amy used to be a terrible nail biter. The chill of the cold night air radiated off the girl’s skin as Joy cleaned the wound with antiseptic.
‘So you realised you didn’t have your purse,’ prompted Joy as Stan sat down, put his elbows on the tabletop, clasped his hands together and rubbed his nose against his knuckles, frowning heavily.
‘Yeah, so I was freaking out, thinking, how am I going to pay the fare, and the driver wasn’t one of those friendly cabbies, you know, I could just tell, he looked like he could be the type to be mean, even aggressive. So we were just driving randomly, and –’
‘Driving randomly?’ interrupted Stan. ‘But what destination did you give the driver when you got in the cab?’
Joy shot him a look. Sometimes he didn’t realise how he could come across to people.
‘I didn’t give him an address. I wasn’t thinking. I said, “Head north.” I was trying to buy myself time while I worked out where to go.’
‘Did the driver not even notice you were hurt?’ asked Joy. ‘He should have taken you straight to the nearest hospital without charging you a cent!’
‘If he did notice, he didn’t want to know about it.’
Joy shook her head sadly. People these days.
‘But anyway, then, for some reason, I don’t know why, something made me do it, I put my hand in the pocket of my jeans and I couldn’t believe it! I pulled out a twenty-dollar note! It was so random! I never find money like that!’
The girl’s face lit up with childlike pleasure as she remembered the moment she’d found the money.
‘Someone was looking out for you,’ said Joy. She cut a piece of gauze from the roll.
‘Yeah, I know, so as the fare got closer to twenty dollars, I started giving the cabbie random directions. Like, turn left. Second right. I don’t know, I was kind of delirious. I was just following my nose. Wait. Did I make that up? Following your nose. It sounds funny now I say it. How do you follow your nose?’
The girl looked up at Joy.
‘No, that’s right,’ said Joy. She tapped her own nose. ‘Following your nose.’
She looked over at Stan. He was pulling on his lower lip the way he did when he disapproved of something. He never followed his nose anywhere. You need a game plan, kid. You don’t just hit the ball and hope to win, you plan how you’re going to win.
‘The moment the fare clicked over to twenty dollars I shouted, “Stop!”And I just got out of the car. It’s so cold outside tonight, I didn’t realise!’ The girl shivered convulsively. ‘And I’ve got bare feet.’ She lifted her dirty foot and pointed at her toes. ‘I was just standing there in the gutter. My feet felt like blocks of ice. I thought, You idiot, you stupid, stupid idiot, what now? And then I started to feel dizzy and I looked at the houses and yours seemed the friendliest, and the lights were on, so . . .’ She tugged on the sleeves of her shirt. ‘So here I am.’
Joy paused, the gauze midair. ‘So . . . but . . . so are you saying, we don’t, you don’t . . .’ She tried to think of a more elegant way to put it, but couldn’t. ‘You don’t know us?’
She saw now that she’d been kidding herself thinking the girl was familiar. She was only familiar in the way everyone seemed familiar these days. They’d just let a stranger into the house.
She checked for signs of criminal tendencies and found none, although she wasn’t exactly sure how those tendencies would manifest themselves. The nose stud was really quite pretty. (Amy had the most dreadful lip piercing a few years back, so Joy wasn’t too concerned by a nose piercing.) A tattoo of a leafy green vine wasn’t exactly intimidating. She seemed fine. A bit flaky perhaps. But she was sweet. This girl couldn’t be dangerous. She was too small. As dangerous as a mouse.
‘You didn’t have any friends or family you could go to?’ asked Stan.
Joy gave him another look. It was true she wanted to ask the same question but there had to be a nicer way.
‘We’ve only just moved down here from the Gold Coast,’ said the girl. ‘I don’t know a single person in Sydney.’
Imagine, thought Joy. You’re all alone, without money, in a strange city and you can’t go back home, what can you do except throw yourself on the mercy of strangers? She couldn’t imagine herself in the same situation. She had always been cushioned by people.
Stan said, ‘Do you . . . maybe want to call someone? Your family?’
‘There isn’t really anyone . . . available, right now.’ The girl lowered her head, so that Joy could see her poor defenceless thin white neck between the clumpy strands of her hair.
‘Look up at me, darling.’ Joy pressed the gauze over the cut. ‘Finger there.’ She guided the girl’s hand to the gauze, taped it in place with a strip of adhesive, and sighed with satisfaction. ‘There you go. All fixed.’
‘Thank you.’ The girl looked at Joy with clear pale green eyes framed by the fairest eyelashes Joy had ever seen. They looked like they’d been dusted with gold. Joy’s children all had those dark matador eyelashes. Joy herself had very ordinary eyelashes.
The girl was unexpectedly pretty now that the blood had been cleared up. So pretty, and so very skinny and dirty and tired. Joy felt an overwhelming desire to feed her, run her a bath and put her to bed.
‘I’m Savannah,’ said the girl, and she held out her hand for Joy to shake.
‘Savannah. That’s a pretty name,’ said Joy. ‘I have a friend called Hannah. Quite similar! Well, not that similar. Savannah. Where do I know that name from? I know, I think Princess Anne has a granddaughter called Savannah. She’s a cute little girl, a bit wicked! I don’t think she’s Princess Savannah, I don’t think she has a title at all. Not that you’d be interested in that. I’ve just always had a special interest in the Royal Family. I follow them on Instagram.’
She couldn’t seem to stop talking. It happened when she felt upset or shocked, and she realised that she possibly did feel a little upset and shocked, right now, by the blood and the story of violence she’d just heard. She saw she was still holding the girl’s small icy-cold hand, and gave it a quick comforting squeeze before releasing it.
‘There’s another Savannah I’m thinking of, besides the royal one, I’m sure there is . . . Oh, I know! My youngest daughter, Brooke, has a friend who just had a baby, and I’m ninety per cent sure she called her Savannah, or it could have been Samantha.’
She remembered the baby’s name was actually Poppy, which was nothing at all like Savannah or Samantha, so that was embarrassing, but no need to mention it. ‘Brooke herself isn’t ready to have a baby yet, because she’s started her own physiotherapy practice, which is exciting.’
Not exciting at all, infuriating, but as her grandfather used to say, ‘Never spoil a good story with the facts.’
‘She’s very busy focusing on that. It’s called Delaney’s Physiotherapy. I have a card somewhere. She’s really very good. Brooke, I mean. My daughter. Very calm and patient. It’s interesting because we never thought –’
‘Joy,’ interrupted Stan. ‘Take a breath.’
‘We never thought we’d have anyone medical in our family . . .’ Joy trailed off. She put her hand to her neck and felt the headphones that were still sitting there like a giant statement necklace. ‘I was listening to a podcast,’ she explained, idiotically. In fact, she could hear the tinny disembodied voice of her podcast host, still chatting obliviously on, unaware that Joy was no longer listening.
‘I like podcasts,’ said Savannah.
‘We never said our names! I’m Joy!’ Joy switched the headphones off and put them on the table. ‘And this is my grumpy husband, Stan.’
‘Thank you for fixing me up, Joy.’ Savannah gestured at her bandaged face. ‘Even though you’re not a medical family I think you did a tip-top job!’
Tip-top. What a funny word. A blast from the past.
‘Oh, well, thank you,’ said Joy. ‘I never – well.’ She made herself stop talking.
‘I had a good feeling about this house.’ Savannah looked around her. ‘As soon as I saw it. It just felt very warm and safe.’
‘It is safe,’ said Joy. She avoided looking at her husband. ‘Would you like something to eat, Savannah? Are you hungry? Have a banana! Or I have leftovers from dinner I could heat up.’ She didn’t give the girl time to accept the offer before she rushed into the next. ‘And then you’ll stay the night, of course.’
She was so glad her cleaning lady, Good Old Barb, had been today and that together they’d vacuumed and dusted Amy’s old bedroom.
‘Oh,’ said Savannah. She looked uneasily over at Stan and then back again at Joy. ‘I don’t know about that. I could just . . .’
But it was clear there was nowhere else for her to go at this time of night and there was no way in the world that Joy was sending this tiny barefoot girl back out into the cold.